How EU rules are hitting British forestry

European rules on marketing timber are harming British forestry businesses, an MEP has cautioned.

Conservative Anthea McIntyre said regulations intended to block illegally-sourced wood being imported from abroad were proving a big drain on domestic
producers.

The West Midlands MEP issued the warning in Strasbourg during a debate on the European Union's Timber Regulation, which the EU Commission is
proposing to review this year.

Currently it demands that businesses marketing timber or timber products in the UK market undertake a "due diligence" exercise to minimise the possibility
that they contain any illegally-harvested timber.

That means a burdensome investigation process, including seeking any evidence of lawful harvesting, before undertaking a risk assessment and mitigating
any possibility of wood coming from illicit sources.

The legislation was intended primarily to deal with imports of illegal timber from non-EU countries, but is badly affecting woodland-owners in the
UK where illegal logging is a non-issue.

Miss McIntyre said: "The legislation may be well-intended as an environmental measure - but because it is over-prescriptive it has unintended
consequences.

"Illegal logging has to tackled - but not where it doesn't exist.

"The UK timber industry entirely supports the principle of stopping the criminal trade, but the EU must come up with a better way of doing it.
We need to apply the regulation to third-country imports, but a blanket approach in the EU is not necessary given that the level of illegal logging
is so infinitesimally small.

"We need targeted activity, working with problem countries to strengthen their internal governance procedures, so that the vast majority of woodland
owners across the EU are not burdened with unnecessary cost or pointless bureaucracy."